What Would Stanley Kubrick’s True Detective Look Like?

By Josh Hill | Oct 19, 2014

True Detective’s second season is right around the corner, and the wait for new material has fans trying to stay busy by thinking up ways to make the show interesting. Sunday night saw The Simpsons parody Stanley Kubrick films, which got some True Detective fans thinking: what would the show look like if Kubrick were still alive to direct it?

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His attention to detail often frustrated everyone he worked with but the end result of his efforts in his career are a slew of classic films that are regarded as some of the best films ever captured.

Besides his attention to detail, Kubrick was a master at working with an adapted story, as none of his films were original works in terms of the story but all seemed that way given how deep he went inside of the tales he told. That’s where things would get interesting on True Detective as the firs question would be is Kubrick adapting an old detective case or is he coming up with something original.

Take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of the closest Kubrick came to original story material. He worked a lot with Artur C. Clarke but the film contained a lot of Kubick story creation and at the very least an abundance of mystifying themes that are still argued over today.

That’s probably what would be so amazing about a Kubrick version of true Detective as it would be a story likely packed with tons of moral ambiguity — even more so than we’ve already seen which is saying a lot.

We will never see a Stanley Kubrick version of True Detective but we can imagine what it would have been like and the result of that thought is confusing, frustrating and absolutely brilliant.

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